Fantasy Movie League observations from an obsessed nerd

July 20, 2016

Fantasy Movie League 2016 Summer Week 9 Picks

I’m back from a week of cruising the Caribbean and with a rested mind/body I want to give a big shout out to Mara for taking over this space last week. I loved the depth of her analysis and was awed by the awesomeness of her alliterative title. While I don’t plan on missing a week until December, she’ll remain on the top of my sub list.

Week 9 Perfect Combo Probabilities

This week, if you take the straight average of the ShowBuzzDaily and ProBoxOffice.com forecasts, you would find the optimal combination is “Star Trek”, 2x “Finding Dory”, 2x “The Purge”, 2x “The Shallows”, and “Absolutely Fabulous”. However, when my model applies variance to those pro forecasts, it sees that combination as the 7th best play, with lots of variety above it.

Thursday numbers will be critically important this week for “Star Trek”, “Ice Age”, and “Lights Out”, the latter of which can emerge as a dark horse Best Performer candidate if it gets into the high teens or low $20M’s. As discussed on the podcast, a Thursday preview number of $5M would prove solid for “Star Trek”, “Lights Out” would be looking to match the previews for “The Shallows” at $1.3M, and “Ice Age” is far more difficult to judge as the latest installment in an animated franchise.

If you are looking for a higher risk, higher reward play this week take a hard look at those Thursday “Lights Out” numbers. Should it threaten $20M, playing it on four screens is viable, as is the British import “Absolutely Fabulous”, which neither pro forecasting service made a prediction on, but would only have to get to $1.7M to make a run at Best Performer. Based on the long running TV series, it premiered in the UK on 600+ screens to $5.8M and although it only appears on 315 theaters in its US opening, it would only need a per screen average of $5,400 to get to $1.7M, which is less than half what it did in its native country.